Polish literature, art and language have become of interest to many persons from all around the world, and university units and educational institutions teaching about Polish language, literature and culture have definitely played a major role in it.

Since the knowledge about the institutions offering Polish Studies programmes, their history and people behind them is highly fragmentary and scattered, there is a need to communicate effectively on the matters of such importance to Polish culture and heritage.

'Geopolonistyka' will be a project making such communication possible – a world map with marked locations of the current and former Polish Studies centres. This solution will combine various types of content from the ‘Polish Studies Newsletter’ – databases, information texts and an interactive map in the OpenStreetMap format with geo-location functions.

The links between the map, the articles and the database will make it possible to see the bios of international scholars who conduct research on the Polish literature, culture and language, and present in this way the state of research on the Polish literature abroad, as well as the current and past activity of all institutions with Polish studies programmes worldwide.

Also, we hope that this solution will translate into a more intense international cooperation among scholars and academic centres, increase awareness of the similarities and differences between the Polish Studies centres, and facilitate the promotion of such centres.

The project will offer the possibility to search for a given institution by entering the website directly, and also through a search engine, according to the selected criteria – institution type, programme type and the years of research and didactic activity. The search results in the form of locations marked on the map will include links to more detailed descriptions of specific institutions on the ‘Polish Studies Newsletter’ website.

Materials will be published in Polish, Russian and English, to reach those potential students who are interested in Polish literature and culture but do not yet have sufficient command of Polish.

The idea and name for the ‘Geopolonistyka’ project was put forward by professor Magdalena Popiel.

The project is carried out under the programme of Modern International Promotion, run by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

Full project title: ‘Modern tools for promotion of the didactic and research activity of the Institute of Literary Research, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Polish Studies, Faculty of Humanities at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw’ (no. PPI/NPZ/2018/1/00065).

The ‘Geopolonistyka’ project is carried out as a result of cooperation of the Institute of Literary Research, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the International Association of Polish Studies (MSSP), the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PCSS) and the scientific institutions that contribute to the ‘Polish Studies Newsletter’ ("Biuletyn Polonistyczny").

We invite all interested research institutions to contact the Editorial Team of the ‘Polish Studies Newsletter’ for possible cooperation!